Over the past several years, the amount of personal information that individuals share online has increased dramatically. Many web sites provide an online community that provides content focusing on a common interest or theme, and allows people to join the online community and share personal information with other users of the online community. Online social networking sites have also been rapidly gaining in popularity. Typically, users of an online social network communicate with one another and meet other users based on personal information captured in the profiles or landing pages of other users.
Also, users of online social networks often request their existing friends to join, creating a web of online relationships that mirror offline ones. Operators of online social networking sites typically require that new users provide certain personal information to join, including contact information (e.g., physical and e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, instant messaging nicknames, etc.) and identifying information (e.g. a name, location, personal interests, age, etc.).
A positive consequence of this general trend is the greater ability for groups of friends, families and other acquaintances to communicate online with, and about, each other as users of a social network. For example, a group of friends may share personal information with each other about common interests, individual personal attributes, events, schedules and activity plans and may also access each others' personal information. Another benefit of online social networks is that their users can more easily find others who share common interests, goals, lifestyles, etc., without being limited to an online community dedicated to a particular interest. Doing so allows members to expand their social networks.
With access to cheap storage and higher bandwidths, the amount of information stored by users of online social networks has grown exponentially. In addition to profile information, the users now often store large amounts of multimedia files, including blogs, digital photos, and digital audio and video files. As a consequence, the process of browsing the content of other users has become highly inefficient.
In addition, as more and more interesting web sites and online communities are being created, individuals are joining multiple ones to benefit from the services provided by them. The downside of all this is that individuals maintain their content under multiple profiles and it is becoming increasingly difficult to share them efficiently with others.
The web site, onxiam, permits a user to consolidate all of his or her online identities in a single location and present them as hyperlinks on a web page that can be made accessible to anyone who wants to learn about the user's multiple online identities. In Yahoo! 360°, users maintain a personal web site through which they can maintain a blog, share their photos using a feed from Flickr, present profile information, subscribe to external feeds, and see which friends are currently online.